Full Circle

Well, another month, another entry

Today is the first day back at the new office. Yes it sounds strange, but since I have been with this company, about 7.5 years now. During that time we've moved offices several times. I started in the West End office, this is a mixed blessing. The location - good restaurants, high tech shops and a fair mix of clothes, paper, furniture and other odds and sods means that any purchasing needs are catered for. And the proximity to Soho, the cinemas and theatre land and the nether world means that if you can't find something to occupy yourself for entertainment then your needs are probably beyond the legal norm.

The West End office itself, by way of contrast, is probably some of the worst office space available. Yes, it looks OK, but the aircon doesn't work, it has limited space and the lift has an irritating tendency to deposit visitor at floor 2 and 3/4. Since Harry Potter and his Hogwarts colleagues are sadly missing this means a call to the lift engineer or the firebrigade to get the poor souls out.

Anyway, this was my office home for the first few years. Then we took a lease on some property on the East End - Brick Lane. A disused sweat shop - aka clothing factory. The sort of place that made me feel as if I'd spontaneously flown a few thousand miles south to Bangladesh. 20 minutes on the tube from Charing Cross and it's a whole new world. Same weather, completely different place, new sights, sounds, smells and ambience. This is the cultural centre of the Bangla community in London. Curry houses line the street. A radical change from the leather shops that used to be the mainstay of business there when I lived in Hampstead (as a lodger.I couldn't afford a house there!). So, what with curry houses, beigel shops (a legacy of the Jewish history of Brick Lane), Spitalfields market and Noodle King up the road your culinary tastes are generally well catered for. Let's just hope curry is what you want. Just recently the City has been encroaching. New office blocks around Spitalfields and a whole gentrification of the area. Now 'Meejaa' competes with curry and sari shops for space. The side streets are shifting emphasis from seedy down at heel shops to wide expanses of glass fronted offices which look in on Mac laden desks. And yes, the flat prices are rising to match the new wealth.

Then Easynet had a reverse merger with another company, and for a while my offices were several in Chertsey. The back end of no-where and a nightmare to get to, and once you were there you wondered why you'd bothered. Still the offces were good ......... Yawn, ZZzzzzz.

And so back to Brick Lane, and then back to Whitfield St (9 months - a pregnant pause I suppose) and now back to Brick Lane. Full circle again and again.

On the rails

I am saddened to report that the dear old bike has had to go to hospital. Shortly before Christmas it was due it's MoT and Road Tax. No big deal, needs a new tyre on the front just to be sure, but part from that it should be fine. How wrong can one be. I gave it a quick once over with the intention that on the Monday I'd ride to work, nip in to the local Watford Tyres en route and get both tyre and MoT sorted. Errr no.. the bike would not start, I could not hear the fuel pump start, there was total silence. Maybe flat battery? Nope - headlight shining bright enough to blind. Get suspicious, jiggle wire coming down from handlebar - pump springs to life. Release wire, pump stops. Turn handlebar left and right, pump starts, pump stops. Damn. I know what that means - a broken wire. Go back inside house, dump biker gear, emerge as alter ego - commuter man!

And that's who I've been ever since - weekly train pass and gently trying to sort getting bike to garage. Not that simple - RAC doesn't cover me at home, it won't fit into the back of the SAAB. I feel a bit of a cheat wheeling it down the high street and pretending that I arrived there and 'it just broke down .... honest guv!'.

So Christmas comes and goes - the bike sits outside the house. Mind you, I'm not going to work over Chirstmas so no big deal. I take a look at the wiring but stripping the insulation from the loom to find the break in the rain and wind is unappealing.

I take the train. First thing that surprises is the cost - ye gods, how much? But I only want to go to London. For less than that I can get a return to Madrid by plane! Well maybe not ... it'll cost me more than the flight to get to the airport. Still a stranded biker and his cash are readily parted and at least I'll have a warm seat. Wrong again! Seats are a rare commodity and have usually been bagged by people earlier than me on the line. Even when, on odd days, I do get a seat I find myself next to some immense man mountain who occupies more than his fair share of the padded real estate.

Of course trains run to a regular timetable. This is true sometimes. The rule is that if you are late to the station then the trains run on time. If you arrive in good time for the train then it is delayed or cancelled. I have yet to work out how they know whether I am going to be late or early - and how they could possibly schedule the trains to take advantage of my random arrivals, but somehow they do.

Every week I have to buy a new weekly travelcard. This is quite a good idea, not only does it prevent me incurring a fine for travelling without paying, but it also acts as an underground pass as well. I like the underground. You get to have close encounters with people you would never meet intimately otherwise. The tube train drivers seem to delight in attempting either a GT start from the lights with 10,000 close packed souls on board, or discovering that they have mistimed the braking as they arrive at the next station and they are forced to do an emergency stop to prevent the train running on out of the station. These maneuvers invariably result in a collision with some other unfortunate as they too become detached from whatever support they had been clinging to.

As we arrive in Goodge St station the entire train empties. I'm not sure why. Why is it not Leicester Square or Tottenham Court Road that attracts the masses. Why Goodge St? Anyway, a mad rush for the 4 lifts ensues. There is only ever one of them down, the other 3 are going up. How does that work? Needless to say, the outrush from both the northbound and the southbound trains will not fit a single lift. I take the stairs. 186 steps later I emerge - my heart is doing about 130 beats per minute and my throat is dry and a slim girl walks nonchalantly past as I gasp for air. Damn! I'm on the rails!

Aici zace un om .....

Well hello again dear reader(s) - my boundless optimism has considered the possibility that there may be more than one.

So it's a new year. So what? One day it was 2006, the next it's 2007. And this is supposed to change everything? I don't think so. The fish in the tank can barely tell one day from the next. The cats schedule their feeds twice a day, so maybe they have some concept of time. But we, the human race, homo sapiens (spot the oxymoron), think that the transition from one year to the next is a time of renewal. Why should it be, and why should it be this arbitrary point in the calendar. I mean, for example, the winter solstice has some meaning in astronomical and astrological terms - but what's 2 or 3 days later mean? What does 9 or 10 days later mean? Just arbitrary points in a time continuum - it's like that faux invalid, Andy, in the 'Little Britain' series had stood up at some distant point in the past and said 'I want that one!' but Lou wasn't there to say 'Are you sure?'

Anyway, I'm off topic. I'm also off paint. Ugh .... people do this for a living. Well I can understand that, I suppose. At least they get paid for it. But as a hobby? No, no, no, NO!!! So I have been painting the hall for the last couple of weekends on and off. We have chosen a calm mix of magnolia and 'biscuit' - roughly digestive biscuit colour rather than chocolate or pink iced biscuit colour. This is, in fact, probably better than the mix of aubergine, green and yellow we had previously - at least it doesn't challenge the more conservatively minded fiends (freudian slip) we have.

Decorating seems to consist mainly of preparation; sanding, filling, more sanding, washing, laying the masking tape so you don't accidentally paint the carpet, choosing colours, trying to get the ladder into position, and then tidying up - rinsing brushes in smelly white spirits, endlessly rinsing the roller to clear the paint blah, blah bleugh.

Somewhere in this cycle of prep and tidying comes the actual painting bit. This would be quite easy if the area awaiting paint was a simple flat surface, but it isn't. Of course it isn't, you stupid fool! If it was then you could do the whole lot in a single day and done with it. No, there are corners, pipes, door frames, doors, coving, dado rails, skirting boards, banisters, and even a moulded plaster arch surround. All of these variations on the theme of 'flat' has to be coped with. And each takes time - extra time, lots of extra time!

Oh there are short cuts. Use a 'one coat' paint? Oh hahahahaha! One coat, yes if the previous paint happened to be the same colour, or very close, to the one you are applying now. 'Oh yes we improved our hall radically - we changed from a pale cream to magnolia - it made all the difference.' Errr no! You could probably have gotten the same effect by not smoking 40 a day in your house for the last 20 years and washing the walls! Anyway, for those who think you can just apply a coat of 'one coat' paint and cover a completely different colour - you can't. Undercoat and 2 coats of the 'one coat' are required for a decent finish.

So enough on painting and decorating - it will be the death of me.

Yuletide

So this is Christmas .... So sang that wondergroup Slade.

Yipee. A season of good cheer and good will to all men. Is it? And why should it be restricted to a season? Why not do it for a whole year? For a day or so a year, if you are a God fearing Christian you refrain from beating your fellow man over the head with a brick or rubbing a broken beer bottle in his face? What chance then the rest like me, for whom God is a word most commonly used in anger when the chisel slips and embeds itself in my palm or the car door shuts on my fingers or the last step is the one cat was sleeping on before I trod on it?

So why am I not rejoicing? Why take the easy route and be cynical? Well apart from the fact that this is what I do, it's also what I think. Over hyped - I should say! Christmas starts in August now. At least that is when the local garden centre put the first decorations up. By September they were playing Christmas music! I pity the poor staff- by December they must be sick to the back teeth with the whole festival.

Why then have we fallen victim to this over commercialisation? Why do we allow it? That kitsch vase your grandmother will never admit to hating, that next useless electronic gimmick used twice and consigned to the back of a random shelf. What do we acheive with this petty consumerism. I'll tell you what we acheive, a new Rolls for the al-Fayeds, a bowl of rice for a poor child in the Indian ghetto. So rejoice and that over used lyric from Wizzard will become true- the wish realised and it will be Christmas every day.

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The Watchers

So it appears we are the most surveilled nation. One CCTV for every 14 people in the UK. Every day there are up 300 images of each of us stored somewhere. Well, that's only the beginning!

Too add to the information from CCTV there are credit cards, every transaction tracked and localised, in real time. Store loyalty cards; tracking every item you buy, when and where you buy it. Oyster cards, tracing every journey you make on the underground or any bus around London. Your mobile phone, scanning across cells giving a rough picture of your movements. With GPS it could be better. Every phone call, every text, calling and called numbers stored for the moment the information might be useful. Everytime you log onto the net via your ISP your IP address is stored along with enough information to localise the connection geographically and in time. Send an e-mail and the full set of header information held who sent it, when, who too, how it was routed, what client was used etc. etc.

Are you getting the picture yet? The government certainly can. All this information is held about you, now. And more .... identity cards (coming soon at your expense), DNA banks, iris and retinal images, fingerprints records, tax returns, payment records, NHS data for medical and dental treatments, scolastic acheivements, records of which books you have taken from the library. It's all there. The amount of data currently held on any individual allows the most pervasive, complete and intrusive examination of their life without their knowledge, without their permission.

Maybe you think there are safeguards. Laws concerning privacy, appropriate access to data. Dream on! Just be sure ... someone, somewhere, is watching you.

Relatively Loud

It's the children's half term. This last weekend, the start, we went to visit my brother, his wife and my five nephews. They live just north of Plymouth, a place with the charming name of Crapstone. (Don't ask ...)

So we set out on Friday, it was quite early in the afternoon. the traffic should have been moderate. Wrong! The M25 lived up to its nickname as the highway to hell. By the time we had travelled about 15 miles and were irrevocably committed, to the extent that any alternative route would itself add hours of hassle, we were ensnared. So for some not insignificant piece of time we admired various number plates and exhaust pipes. It became patently obvious that, as an experiment, no lane moved any faster than any other. Having observed the ' lets change lane as often as possible' drivers, a van in the centre lane, a truck on the inner lane and ourselves in the outside lane it became evident that the only way to win was to lose two wheels and drive down the white lines between the cars. One slight problemetto - I haven't got a bike that can take four people and their luggage. Damn!

Off the motorway was no better ... to save boring you all completely to death, a journey that shouldn't take more than five hours took over seven. We tried the A303, that snarled up. Rather than queuing the whole route we opted for slow and steady, so we cut down to the A30; Salisbury, Wilton, Axminster, Yeovil etc. Very scenic, almost relaxing ... but slow. Hey, the upside is that the journey was eco-friendly!

Devon lived up to it's usual rep. It is the wettest corner of England I have been to. Periods of blue sky punctuated the grey, but woe betide the fools that thought that because it was sunny when they started the walk it would be sunny for the whole walk. Whoops!! That'd be these fools then! Did that twice - though we did take waterproofs with us once.

One thing that is worth noting is that when we are talking about a walk, this is in fact a logistics exercise which has to be executed with military precision. Organising five children, plus our own two, is no trivial feat. It is astonishing how many items of clothing need to be marshaled. Shoes gathered from various corners of the house. Socks, any two will do, the chance of a matched pair is too slim, so just the right size is good enough. Trousers? Definitely preferred. Be amazed at how long the nephews are prepared to wander around in pyjamas. Oh, I almost forgot, one or more will have to be forcibly disconnected from either games console or the PC.


And we haven't even got to the car yet. There is the inevitable debate over who goes in which car. Baby all strapped in. Assorted kids in the appropriate seating - thank you nanny state for that - and we're off. Now which direction did they turn out of the drive? Lets guess left. Phew!

One walk later, decamping from the car is much quicker, we can relax back in the house. Rewind .... did I say relax? Wrong, the kids relax, the adults run around sorting out food and stuff. We don't get to relax until they've gone to bed. This is rather like herding butterflies. Three degrees of freedom means that whilst one is settled the rest run amok, and when you turn your your back on the settled one he's out like a shot joining his brothers. Hmmmm, scene one, take two, three, four ........

And now the return, we set out later than advertised, see above for excuses. It was raining a little, by the time we got to Exeter there was enough electrical discharge to power a small country for a few weeks. Roughly one lighting strike every 2 minutes. I not see horizontal lightening before, but this stuff was running between clouds as well as cloud to earth. Oh, and the rain .... that was monsoon style. Sheets of the stuff, so heavy there was an inch or more of standing water on the motorway in places. Still, it made for a more interesting drive I suppose.


So what learning do I take from this:-
1. Do not have 5 children ... they are very loud and very hard work.
2. During any particular interval when they are not in bed any two or more will be at each others throats for one reason or another. Corollary - Do not expect to understand the reason.
3. Do not turn your back on any of them.
4. Whatever time you allocate for preparation to go out is increased proportionally by the number of children under 10 involved.
5. Consider yourself lucky if you return with the same number of children, boots and gloves as you set out with.